Q. And you still paid out the million dollars?
A. Yes.

Q. So that's another $80,000 in lost entry fees down the drain. Were most of these players regulars?
A. To Barona? No. About 70 percent were first-timers.

Q. How did you find so many new premium players?
A. We have ten independent rep groups that rep us, as well as Vegas properties. They're in Texas, Palm Desert, from all over. Nobody had ever done this before, so the reps shared my enthusiasm because it was so unique, so it was an easy sell for them.

Q. Would it be out of line to ask who your outside player development reps are?
A. Like I said before, we have ten or so, but our top producers for this event were Luxury Travel out of Las Vegas, Steve Conigliaro, Jack Feinberg, Dave Grunell, and Bill Novelli.

Q. It's hard to believe that you could get more than 30 world-class gamblers to schlep all the way out to San Diego when they could be in Vegas. Was the prize the reason the came?
A. I'm sure it was. When can anyone get a one in fifty chance to win a million dollars for only ten thousand?

Q. How was the budget broken up?
A. We added five hundred thousand [laughs], or planned to anyway, to the pot and then we had welcome gifts, rooms, transportation, food and beverage, golf, training, some other cash prizes, consultants ... just lots of things that added up.

Q. Speaking of transportation, how did you get these high rollers out to Barona?
A. Some flew in on their own jets, we leased a few for others, some came by helicopter -- we have our own heliport here -- some more flew in first class, and we had all of our limos and rented a few more, about twelve in all, running full time for four days.
Q. That's a lot of limos. Why so many?
A. We had them there in case anybody needed anything special; we wanted to provide the extra service.

Q. Did you comp anyone's entry fees?
A. No.

Q. No! What did your customers say about that? This level of player is pretty used to getting everything handed to them on a platter.
A. Even our guests with million-dollar-plus lines didn't complain. They were all willing to pay the ten thousand just for the experience.